Top 10 Cities with the Worst Traffic in the US – Infographic

One of the biggest reasons we’re creating our map based local job search tool is because I absolutely hate commuting in horrible traffic. I actually moved inside the Beltway in Houston where my commute is in the opposite direction of rush hour traffic (It saves me about 45 minutes a day). So when TomTom released the 2011 Congestion Index Report, I was highly interested to see the rankings. Plus, we’ve created a handy little infographic to show the results for the US. Check out the full size image of the worst traffic infographic.

Top 10 Cities with the Worst Traffic in the US – An infographic by your Local Job Search team, Jobplotter.

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Top 10 Cities with the Worst Traffic in the US – Infographic – An infographic by your Local Job Search team, Jobkaster.

Wasting Away Behind the Wheel

In 2007, the Texas Transportation Institute conducted a study that showed that Americans lost 4.2 Billion hours of their lives sitting in traffic, not to mention the 2.8 Billion gallons of fuel that was wasted. Seems like a lot of waste to me, but people have to work, right?

What can we do about it?

The majority of rush hour traffic is due to people commuting to and from work. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all work a little bit closer to home? Depending on where you work, the time saved is well worth it. To make this feasible in our urban areas, I think there are some things that should be done to help build communities that are more commuter friendly. Many areas have already been built to cater to this type of community layout, just check out Walkscore’s community walkability ratings. This can’t be accomplished with community planning only. We would need a major shift in thinking to occur combining a push from citizens, businesses, and government, plus a revamp of our transportation system.

When our map based job search app launches, we hope to help families find jobs closer to home. Not only will this help people reclaim hours spent commuting, but we’re also hoping that we can do something bigger.